Abstract

Experience and training can influence discrimination of tonal sequences. Current work investigated pitch and rhythm processing of four-tone sequences by audiology and speech students, audio-arts students experienced in critical listening, and trained musicians. Sequence tones either had a fixed duration (212 ms) with frequency randomly selected from a logarithmically scaled distribution (400–1750 Hz), a fixed frequency (837 Hz) with a randomly selected log scaled duration (75–600 ms), or a random frequency and duration. In initial conditions, the task was to assemble sequence elements to recreate the target sequence for each of the three sequence types. To evaluate effect of extraneous randomization, both frequency and duration were randomized in the final two conditions with only one of the two attributes defining the target sequence. Audio-arts students performed significantly better than audiology and speech students in the reconstruction task. In conditions involving joint processing of sequencepitch contour and rhythm, the performance of audio-arts students was well approximated by the optimal combination of uncorrelated but integral stimulus dimensions. Ongoing work is evaluating the performance of trained musicians in the sequence-reconstruction task, with emphasis on manner in which information is combined across the dimensions of sequencepitch and rhythm. [Work supported by NIH.]